Everyday Paranormal Experiences, Interview #10

“Who believes in those kinds of things,” Braden asked, “I mean, once they’re grown up and all? That’s how I know what I saw was real, ‘cuz I don’t believe in that kinda’ stuff. I probably wouldn’t believe my story if I heard it from someone else, so I know how it sounds. I still don’t know if I should believe my eyes.”

Braden’s candid account of what he saw and how it made him feel ring similar feeling chords with myself. I’m a skeptic, even of my own experiences, just as it sounds Braden is. His tale is brief, he doesn’t give many details, and it’s obvious he’s still trying to decide if maybe his experience was just a dream or something he saw in a movie.

He was on his way back to his car in the parking lot of the grocery store he stopped at after work one afternoon when he saw a commotion in the parking lot across the street. At first, he thought it was a radio station van and that they were giving away concert tickets or keys to pickup trucks with the energetic crowd surrounding the black Mercedes van.

He didn’t think much of what was happening across the street it until he was pulling out of the parking lot and was able to see that the crowd was no ordinary gathering of people. He sat at the curb trying to wrap his mind around what he was seeing. They were angry and somewhat bloody (he thinks) people clawing at one another to get to the black van at the center of their mob. He was trying to tell if it was some practical joke or something like a flash mob, but zombies instead of dancers.

One of the people turned and saw Braden sitting in his car staring at them and began to lurch toward him, drawing several others attention, as well. They began to angrily stumble towards him, and now he could hear them moaning and growling inhumanly as they came ever closer.

“I don’t know what I saw, man, I just peeled out and drove the hell home!” Braden finishes. He washes his face with both hands and smiles real big before his conclusion, “But I keep havin’ two thoughts: ‘Those were real life zombies!’ and, ‘Ha-ha! Zombies, sure!’ I never watch the news, but for three weeks I watched it every night and even DVR’d another channel just in case! But nothin’ ever showed up.”

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Was Braden’s zombie sighting real? If so, why wasn’t anything ever reported and why have no other reports of zombies in suburban Atlanta surfaced? Was his sighting truly just an impromptu zombie festival and the participants got a little carried away? Or is this simply a case of misunderstood events with a completely plausible explanation?

The Skeptic’s Rating: 8/10 – Braden was pretty vague on the details, and the lack of another witness or a report are suspicious. However, it could have been a part of a conspiracy to cover up the existence of a zombie plague, and so his story only raises 80% of my skepticism flags.

I myself am a huge skeptic of all things paranormal or extra-terrestrial and I tend to take most tales of either with a huge grain of salt – sometimes even an entire salt shaker, depending on the tale that’s being weaved. I have even had a couple ghostly and otherworldly experiences myself, which I may relate in later stories – and I’m skeptical of those! Is what I experienced the truth of the experience or is there an empirical explanation that I simply have not yet unlocked? Regardless of my skeptical nature, ghost stories and alien encounters have always fascinated me as they have all of humanity for thousands of years.

It is this fascination that I wish to convey in a unique and different paranormal or alien experience every week – Thursday, to be exact. I will be conducting interviews with everyday people to hear their stories and relate them back to you, the Paranoid Gamers. Perhaps I’ll be interviewing some of you, as well.

Do you have an experience of a haunted item, place, or person? Have you been visited by aliens or heretofore undocumented intelligent life – terrestrial or extra so? If you’d like to share your experience and possibly have your tale published in this series of articles, please contact me and we can relive your experience.